A group of teachers at Clifford Smart Middle School in Michigan's Walled Lake Consolidated School District have broken free from traditional grading in order to embrace a more meaningful grading practice. Using standards-based grading practices, they believe their grading now accurately communicates to students and parents the student's mastery level of content standards. These teachers have created an eight-step guide to apply standards-based grading in your own classroom. (Contains 4 figures.)